Think Better · 55 sec
Build a Margin of Safety
Plans fail when every assumption must be exactly correct.
The useful idea
- Understand
Variation in time, demand, cost, and performance makes perfectly fitted plans fragile.
- Connect
Extra capacity, time, cash, strength, or redundancy creates room for error.
- Apply
Place the largest margins around assumptions with high uncertainty and costly failure.
Why this matters
A safety margin absorbs ordinary variation before it becomes a crisis.
Try this
Ask: How much error can this plan tolerate?
Test your recall
Which action best applies “Build a Margin of Safety”?
- Ask: How much error can this plan tolerate? — correct
- Keep the original plan without checking the mechanism.
- Treat the first visible result as the whole system.
A safety margin absorbs ordinary variation before it becomes a crisis.